[CHEERING]
[APPLAUSE]
How are you?
CA, would you like me to move the mic so you can stay seated?
Oh, yeah.
I was just going to adjust it.
Yeah, I got you.
That was an amazing introduction.
Yeah, like that.
That's how I like it.
And now--
That's the way to turn.
Am I going the wrong way?
I always go the wrong way.
You did, yeah.
There.
No, it's all right.
That's pretty good.
Thank you, Dominic.
No worries.
Thank you.
That introduction was the most beautiful introduction
with the flowers and the--
thank you all for making this happen.
Everybody at MoCA and the Poetry Center, I am--
hmm?
We're getting a little feedback.
I'm just going to turn it a little bit.
There you go.
Sorry.
Sure.
Thank you.
It's OK.
Perfect.
Thank you.
Can you all hear me just fine?
Great.
This has been an incredible journey.
And something-- I just--
this book was supposed to arrive a week ago today,
and we've been looking for it every day.
And it just-- they just walked up here
just before we started and delivered it.
It was here in Tucson somewhere.
It just delivered to the wrong--
hi, everybody over there.
And-- so I want to--
TC said it's an hour.
It's really not.
Thank you, TC, though.
Do not-- well, I'm going to actually
just begin with the reading.
Thank you so much again.
I'm going to read just one poem from--
let me just tell you a little bit.
So this book, Amanda Paradise, this
is a book that I wrote just before COVID lockdown.
I was writing it.
And I went into COVID a little bit.
And this is working with extinct animal sounds, thinking
of ecopoetics, as beyond the idea of degraded soil, air
and water, including vibrational absence.
And when a species leaves the planet,
they take all their sounds with them.
So I was very fortunate to get a grant from the Creative Capital
people, Creative Capital people.
And I don't know, that's what I call them.
And I got to go to all 50 states.
And I would lie on the ground and flood my body
with the field recordings of animals that had become extinct
in my lifetime.
And then when soon as COVID started,
I could not help but think about AIDS because I lost more than
half of everybody I knew to AIDS in the '80s and '90s.
And it spills over into this other book,
but we'll get into that later.
So the thing is--
it's just a joy to make, this book,
with the extinct animal sounds.
And I feel guilty saying that, but because I thought
I would be very depressing.
But I loved hearing these creatures
that were alive in my lifetime but are gone now.
It's like a conversation with an old friend.
I did other things with the ritual like I would--
I don't want to tell too much about what I did.
It doesn't matter.
But I would write little cards with the animals drawing, very
badly drawn, and an email account for each an animal,
and then leave them in Bibles and stuff, in hotel rooms.
And then people would write back to me
and we'd have these conversations
where I would be the animal, eventually,
getting around to saying what year I became extinct.
Thanks a lot, kind of thing, gets antagonistic.
[LAUGHTER]
But then-- so Amanda Paradise: Resurrect Extinct Vibration.
By the time I was finished with this,
I realized that I needed a new relationship
with this world, this planet because living in this planet,
to want to protect what's left.
We've lost 70% of the wildlife on the planet in the past 50
years, and that's quite a thing that we've accomplished.
That's extraordinary that we did something like that.
And considering how long we've all been here.
But I knew I needed to work with animals
thriving in the Anthropocene.
And that's what the--
I'll get into that in a minute.
So let me just read one poem.
Is that feedback?
It's not-- it's OK.
It sounds all right, right?